Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Generational Dress Code Divide

Many members of the so-called Millennial generation or Gen Y have never been schooled in the traditions that previous generations learned at their parents' knees.  Yet, these 20somethings are still being evaluated by old-school bosses and clients. 

The problem is that most senior managers and executives in business don’t think of clothing as an expression of self.  Instead, they view their suits as the “uniform of business.”  It’s what they wear to identify what team they’re playing for in the game of business.  Yet, for young men and women, a business suit is an uncomfortable yoke to be dusted off for special occasions. 

Business school grads and law associates' casual attitude doesn't allow them to connect the dots between what they wear and how they come across.  Take Bard Tobin, 25, who is working at a midtown Manhattan law firm.  He is certain that clothes don't affect job assignments at his firm.  "Not at all--it's really based on work product," says Mr. Tobin, who is working part-time while he completes law school.  He says he owns suits but doesn't bother to wear them at work.

"Getting up in the morning and putting on a suit is hard," says Sara Shikhman, a 26-year-old legal associate in New York.  She says she hasn't worn one in six months.  When associates show up at work in suits, their peers think they have a job interview, Ms. Shikhman says.  "Guys don't really polish their shoes," she adds.  They go for cool, rather than traditional.  She recognizes that her firm's partners "definitely look more put together than associates, but they also get more sleep than the associates."

Yet, in lawyering, as in business, half the battle is the posturing.  Many experienced lawyers see their wardrobe as a tool to win the trust of clients, juries and judges.  Legal associates who aren't prepared may not be invited along to a new client pitch or to take a leading role in court, regardless of the office's stated "business casual" dress code.

“…if you want to be part of the management team, you need to wear the uniform.” Pat Heim

Women managers can learn more about how to win at the game of business at: www.CareerWomenCoaching.com

For the free Executive Woman's Dress Code ebook, send a request by email to: [email protected]  

Source: The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2008

To reclaim your time and life: "When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.  

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader at Barnes & Noble  (.ePub Format for Nook and iPad eReaders) for $9.99

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition -(.mobi format) for $9.99   

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the pdf Workbook Edition, are available) for $9.99

 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition (Paperback at $14.99)

Women Executives and Stress

When a woman executive feels rushed, overwhelmed, or pressured to do everything, her stress-reducing hormones are depleted, and her stress levels increase.

Taking part in testosterone-producing activities at work can diminish a woman's oxytocin levels.  Oxytocin is a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland that seems to be involved in reproductive behavior in both men and women, and apparently triggers "caring" behavior.  Oxytocin is also the hormone which allows contractions of the womb during pregnancy and labor. When women have plenty of energy, they take great pleasure from their responsibilities.  Creating a lifestyle and diet that sustains unending energy by producing plenty of oxytocin is key to lower stress levels.

Oxytocin levels begin to rebuild when a woman feels seen, heard, and supported. 

At the end of the day, the anticipation of a simple hug, conversation, and some affection can make a big difference.  When she gets home, without an abundance of oxytocin, her roles as a partner, mother, friend and caregiver seem overwhelming.  When she expects to have to do more without enough time or energy, her stress levels go up.  Her experience is quite different from a man's.

When a man's day is done, he begins to relax.  With more responsibilities and less time to recover his testosterone levels, he has less and less energy.  Instead of coming home to a sanctuary of love and support, both men and women today are confronted with a new stress.  Women need more of their partners' time and support, and men are running out of energy.  Consequently, they both have less to give.

Success in the workplace is important for women, but it will never improve the quality of her relationships unless she also takes time to balance her job-related testosterone-producing activities with oxytocin-producing activities and attitudes.  It is primarily the quality of her relationships that keeps a woman's stress levels down.

Source: "Why Mars & Venus Collide" by John Gray, Ph.D.   

Sources:   John G. Agno: Women and Time  

    Barbara McEwen: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge

  John Gray: Why Mars and Venus Collide: Improving Relationships by Understanding How Men and Women Cope Differently with Stress

For a self-coaching guide to career women success:

 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition

"When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno. 

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader and iPad at Barnes & Noble  for $9.99

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition -for $9.99   

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the Workbook Edition, are available) for $9.99

More information at: http://www.CareerWomenCoaching.com

Coaching: Your path to enlightenment

Executive coaching is designed to effect sustained behavioral changes to improve performance.  To achieve this goal, the coaching program must deliver on these prerequisites:

Provide insight into your leadership behavior and style: Executives often assume their current approach is the right one and are blind to its downside. You aren’t likely to change if you embrace this idea. You must request feedback on the effects of your style and actions.  While this may be difficult to hear, your coach can facilitate the feedback process.

Clarify your purpose and interests: The way you lead is intimately connected to who you are as a person.  To improve your skills, you must strengthen the connections between your inner self and external actions.

Improve interpersonal relationships: People’s previous experiences with you and their preexisting judgments should be addressed.  Involving colleagues in your development process can help change their perceptions of you. This will make it easier for you to alter patterns of interaction with them.

Broaden your perspective: Executives succeed because of their strong abilities to conceptualize and think strategically, but they can sometimes become too attached to being right.  In most real-life situations, there are multiple correct answers.  The ability to see and understand increasing complexity is essential.  Coaching helps develop this perspective.

Develop new leadership skills: What are the key activities in a new role? Where should a newly appointed leader focus attention and energy? A skilled coach can help with role expectations and skills-building.

Identify and overcome barriers to change: Change should occur over time, with assistance from your coach.  A coach helps you practice new behaviors in ways that gradually build skills.

Improve your ability to learn: One of coaching’s most important goals is to teach you to internalize the ability to question, learn and continually grow.  You must be able to modify your style and behavior as situations demand.

Independent Thinkers Wanted

MBAs have a sense of entitlement and weak practical skills.

Schools are responding, according to Chief Executive magazine's July/August 2007 issue.  Stanford and Yale have overhauled their curriculums; others are sending students abroad for global experience.  "In two or tree years I think we'll see some very interesting changes," said Richard L. Schmalensee, dean emeritus of MIT's Sloan School of Management.

Shortly after R. Glenn Hubbard took over as dean of Columbia Business School in 2004, he made his own executive decision.  He devised a new twist on the case study--the teaching format invented by Harvard Business School almost a century ago and used by most B-schools.  Hubbard's so-called decision brief offers less information about a situation than the case study, and it doesn't present the solution until students have grappled with the issues on their own.  So far, Columbia has produced six briefs that take on of-the-moment business challenges.  "We want out students to be used to dealing with incomplete data," Hubbard says.  "They should be able to make decisions out of uncertainty."

"Framing problems and finding the data to analyze those problems is a skill that MBAs need and that the classic case doesn't fully exploit," says Michael J. Roberts, the executive director of the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard and author of more than 100 HBS case studies.

The first field test for the new teaching technique will be this summer, when the MBAs head out to their internships.  At Goldman Sachs, which hires more Columbia interns than any other company, the co-head of campus recruiting, Janet Raiffa, hopes to encounter students who are more independent thinkers.

Source: BusinessWeek, February 4, 2008

An Unfortunate Truth

As Americans cut back on imported LCD TVs and Starbucks coffee, the U.S. consumer slowdown will undermine the world economy. 

This consumer slump in the U.S. will affect business investments overseas, including factories that are springing up in China and elsewhere to feed American demand.

The rule for a prudent individual is simple: Don't spend more than you make.  For a long time, the U.S. economy obeyed that rule.  As far back as the 1960s, personal spending, adjusted for inflation, has basically tracked the overall growth of the economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GNP). 

That pattern changed in the 1990s. As of the third quarter of 2007, the 10-year growth rate for consumption was 3.6%, vs. GNP growth for the same period of 2.9%.  This difference represents an enormous gap.  If consumer spending had tracked the overall economy over the past decade as it has in the past, Americans today would be spending about $600 billion less a year.  The extra spending has amounted to a total of about $3 trillion since 2001.  The question now is how much of that extra $3 trillion we will have to give back.

Non-self-liquidating credit is a loan that is not tied to production and tends to stay in the system.  When financial institutions lend for consumer purchases such as expensive cars, boats or homes, or for speculations such as the purchase of stock certificates, no production effort is tied to the loan.  Interest payments on such loans stress some other source of income.  Such lending is almost always counter-productive; it adds costs to the economy, not value. The result is the subtle deterioration in the quality of spending choices due to the shift of buying power from people who have demonstrated a superior ability to invest or produce (creditors) to those who have demonstrated primarily as superior ability to consume (debtors). Near the end of a major expansion, few creditors expect default, which is why they lend freely to weak borrowers.  Deflation involves a substantial amount of involuntary debt liquidation because almost no one expects deflation before it starts.

When the social mood trend changes from optimism to pessimism, creditors, debtors, producers and consumers change their primary orientation from expansion to conservation.  As debtors and potential debtors become more conservative, they borrow less or not at all.  As producers become more conservative, they reduce expansion plans.  As consumers become more conservative, they save more and spend less.  A downward "spiral" begins, feeding on pessimism just as the previous boom fed on optimism. 

The resulting cascade of debt liquidation is a deflationary crash.  A deflationary crash is characterized in part by a persistent, sustained, deep, general decline in people's desire and ability to lend and borrow.  A depression is characterized in part by a persistent, sustained, deep, general decline in production.  Since a decline in production reduces debtors' means to repay and service debt, a depression supports deflation. 

As asset prices fall, people lose wealth, which reduces their ability to offer credit, service debt and support production.  For prices of assets to fall, it takes only one seller and one buyer who agree that the former value of an asset was too high.  If no other bids are competing with that buyer's, then the value of the asset falls, and it falls for everyone who owns it.

The past 10 years will go down as one of the greatest consumer-lending sprees ever.  Adjusted for inflation, consumer debt--including mortgages--rose an average 7.5% per year since 1997, far faster than the 4.2% rate of the previous 10 years.  If Americans had kept borrowing at their pre-1997 pace, they would have had about $3 trillion less in debt.  "Going forward, we're not going to see this credit-driven growth," says Alistair Milne, a professor and banking expert at City University in London.  "Banks are saying, 'we have to be more careful here.'"

Sources: BusinessWeek, February 4, 2008 and Conquer the Crash by Robert R. Prechter Jr.

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Performance Gender Gap

The Harvard Business Review (February 2008) reports star Wall Street female analysts tend to maintain their status when they switch firms, but their male counterparts don't.

Boris Groysberg, a Harvard Business School professor who focuses on organizational behavior and management, spotted the performance gender gap while studying earlier research into the work of star stock analysts.  The data reveals that top female analysts--defined by their rankings in lists published by Institutional Investor--were more likely than men to have built their success on relationships with clients and companies they covered.

By contrast, male analysts relied more on internal networks within their companies.  The women also considered a wider variety of factors in assessing prospective employers.  Male analysts tended to emphasize compensation in their decisions to switch firms.

The female analysts' more successful transitions might be partly inadvertent--the women could have felt compelled to build external relationships because they had more difficulty than their male colleagues securing in-house mentors.  Sexist attitudes could force them to work harder to protect their portability in the industry.  And women generally look for organizations "that will welcome them as individuals," raising the odds they will be successful at the new firm.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2008

Hurdles to Executive Behavioral Change

Here are five potential hurdles to developing executives and convincing them to change their behaviors:

• Lack of authentic feedback: The more authority you have, the less likely you are to seek and receive authentic feedback.  You may present an air of confidence and dominance that discourages meaningful interactions.
• Lack of time or value placed on reflection: Most executives face enormous, continuous and widely varying demands on their time.  The likelihood of having time to reflect on behavior is minimal.  Furthermore, it’s not in the nature of most hard-driving, results-oriented personalities to be introspective.
• Reluctance to reveal weaknesses to others: Leaders strive to continually project an aura of confidence and competence.  Complicating matters, the organization and your peers may discourage you from appearing vulnerable.
• Reluctance to acknowledge weaknesses: Executives often steer clear of acknowledging their personal weaknesses. When your behaviors lead to positive business results, you may rationalize weaknesses in interpersonal style. But denial works for only so long before complexity, stress and challenges take their toll.
• Fear of letting go of a previously successful style: If your leadership style has been working just fine for a few years, you may fear that modifying it puts your effectiveness at risk.

No coach, no matter how talented, can effect change and development in a leader who fails to understand how barriers can sabotage one’s efforts.  When executives agree to change and improve, coaching works.  When they see themselves as responsible for making change, coaching once again works.  The return on investment for organizations is exponential.

Guidelines for Finding a Personal or Business Coach

As a profession, the personal and business coaching industry is still sorting out best practices and standards.  Even professional coaching organizations do not agree on the core competencies of a coach.  Coach certifications can come of any one of several organizations, and the requirements all vary.

This is particularly unfortunate for the person charged with finding good coaches for his or her organization. There are no standard criteria for judging a coach’s value or worth.  Perhaps, the most reliable indication would be past performance with other clients and organizations.

The problem is confounded by the fact that coaching borrows methods from a diverse background of academics and industries ranging from psychology, business, organizational development, human resources, and even sports.  Some excellent Ph.D. level professionals trained in psychology may be suitable for some clients.  A retired CEO or entrepreneur-turned-coach may be more suitable for others.

Here are some FAQs with answers before you jump into a coaching relationship:

1. Who are these people?

There are an estimated 20,000 coaches around the globe. You can check out some personal and business coaching websites at the 1,300 member Coach to Coach Network.  Although coaching certificates are good things to look for, the most important credential a coach needs is your trust to help you get to that place of self-awareness.

2. What kind of coach is right for me?

Executive coaches, who typically work with executives in large firms and business owners in small companies, are brought in as (mostly) agenda-free surrogate mentors. That's become especially important in this mobile age when it's rare to find a lifelong veteran available to offer support and guidance.

Life coaches, on the other hand, are brought in to help people reorder their life to get to where they want to be. Making hard choices about what's important and paying attention to your intentions requires being listened to by a supportive, brainstorming and independent viewpoint.

3. Who needs a coach?

People seek out coaches for an infinite variety of reasons, but there are two typical coachees: people navigating some significant transition in their life or career and those who have some inkling that their leadership style or personality is holding them back.

FORTUNE magazine reported that one reader said, "I went into the coaching experience kicking and screaming, at the insistence of my then-boss. And what an eye-opener it turned out to be. I won't even go into the grim details of bad management habits I had unthinkingly developed in my 14-year career up to that point--but I will say that since I was 'cured' by 12 weeks of pretty intense coaching, I've been promoted three times."

4. What does coaching cost?

Executive coaching engagements typically cost upward of $6,000 per person over a set period of time and include a few face-to-face meetings followed by email and telephone discussions.  To help develop executives internally, rather than look for outsiders, companies are often more happy to foot the bill to fix dysfunctional leaders.  It is important for organizations to understand the return on investment (ROI) of executive coaching.

Some enterprising fast-trackers can and do shell out for their own advancement. 

5. What should you expect?

Coaching is not a substitute for therapy and it's not business strategy. The clients do the heavy lifting.  The coach guides the person being coached by asking the right questions.  The client has to figure out what behavior needs to change and how best to change it.

6. Does coaching work?

People seeking coaching are self-selecting, so the answer is yes.  However, it is best to maintain a guarded edge during the coach selection process to make a good match between what you want out of the coaching experience and the person who can guide you throughout the coaching process.  For why many small business owners resist being coached, click here.

Source: Are You Being Coached? FAST COMPANY, February 2005

Choosing a coach should not be left to intuition, but many times it is.  The interview process should center on previous experience and results.  No matter what the coach’s background, he or she should have a high degree of self-awareness and an ability to work well with different personality styles while keeping an eye on behavioral changes and business results.  The process of designing an effective coaching program does not end with the selection of a qualified coach who is a good fit with the corporate culture.

Coaching is a three-way partnership between the organization hiring the coach, the executive to be coached and the coach.

Why Women Don't Make it into the C-Suite

There is a scarcity of women in top leadership within Corporate America. 

  Despite years of progress in the workforce, only 6% of women hold titles of chairman, president, chief executive officer and chief operating officer in Fortune 500 companies...and...only 15% of the seats on the boards of directors are held by women.

Resistance to Women's Leadership

Study after study has affirmed that people associate women and men with different traits and link men with more of the traits that connote leadership.  Many female leaders struggle to reconcile qualities people prefer in women (compassion for others) with qualities people think leaders need to succeed (assertion and control).

Kim Campbell, who briefly served as the prime minister of Canada in 1993, described the tension that results:

"I don't have a traditionally female way of speaking...I'm quite assertive.  If I didn't speak the way I do, I wouldn't have been seen as a leader.  But my way of speaking may have grated on people who were not used to hearing it from a woman.  It was the right way for a leader to speak, but it wasn't the right way for a woman to speak.  It goes against type."

People view successful female managers as more deceitful, pushy, selfish, and abrasive than successful male managers.  Men are associated with qualities which convey assertion and control.  They include being especially aggressive, ambitious, dominant, self-confident, and forceful, as well as self-reliant and individualistic.  These traits are also associated in most people's minds with effective leadership--perhaps because a long history of male domination of leadership roles has made it difficult to separate the leader associations from the male associations.  As a result, women leaders find themselves in a bind.

Examples of Executive Coaching ROI

Michigan-based Triad Performance Technologies, Inc. studied and evaluated the impact of coaching to support 67 regional and district sales managers within the large telecom environment where they worked.  Positive results were achieved in several key areas, which led to an estimated $2 million profitability impact from the group receiving the coaching. Changes included: 1). a shift in focus to strategic account development and increased sales volume; 2). improved performance from managers who previously had not met their objectives; 3). enhanced customer satisfaction and increased revenues; and 4). retention of top-performing staff.

"The intervention produced significant business and economic impact. The immediate return on the investment made in the coaching program will be in the 10 to 1 range. And, the long-term return is anticipated to be even higher,” says Triad’s Dennis Dressler who managed the evaluation process.  The study found that the following business outcomes were directly attributable to the coaching intervention:

• Top performing staff, who were considering leaving the organization, were retained, resulting in reduced turnover, increased revenue, and improved customer satisfaction.
• A positive work environment was created, focusing on strategic account development and higher sales volume.
• Customer revenues and customer satisfaction were improved due to fully staffed and fully functioning territories.
• Revenues were increased due to managers improving their performance and exceeding their goals.

Another study conducted by MetrixGlobal for an executive coaching program was impressive. Over 70 executives were coached from a multi-national telecommunications company that included participants in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

MetrixGlobal performed an extensive survey of 43 coaching participants that yielded the following results:

Coaching produced a 529% return on investment and significant intangible benefits to the business.  Including the financial benefits from employee retention, coaching boosted the overall ROI to 788%.  The study provided powerful new insights into how to maximize the business impact from executive coaching.

For more on executive coaching, go to: www.MENTORINGandCOACHING.com

For some sales coaching tips, go to www.SalesTip.info